Even though this handout is kind of random, we’d love it if you still treated it as a regular beta invite (that means giving us some feedback)!

Within 24 hours of redeeming the key, you’ll receive a message on Desura with some information about the beta, as well as an invite to a hidden forum on IndieDB where you can give us feedback or bug reports :)

Christmas is drawing near, and we’ve been putting up Christmas decorations and hunting for presents, but that hasn’t stopped us from at least getting some work done on the game!

The miniboss is coming along nicely. As mentioned in the last recap, he can dash across the stage as an invulnerable ball of light, firing bullets all around him. When in physical form, he’ll fire another pattern the player will need to traverse before being able to punish him!

Even normal mode is a bit tricky…

…but hard mode brings it to 11!

Hmm… I wonder what he’ll be like in the Arena Challenge! As you can probably tell from the screenshots, the temple is flying high above the ground. Perhaps now the birds will make more sense as an enemy :D

Speaking of enemies, here’s the last regular enemy of the dungeon, the Brawler Bot:

These guys can quickly close the gap between you with the help of a rocket dash, followed by a straight punch to the face! One or two of them is not really a problem, but in numbers they start to surround you. If they get shielded by a blue Guardian Crystal, you might be in some trouble!

This week also marks the sad end of Fred’s tablet, a Bamboo Wacom, previously thought indestructible. RIP Mr. Bamboo :(

The following couple of weeks, the updates might not be all that substantial due to the holidays, but we’ll probably manage to squeeze something in!

This week our work with the dungeon has continued! Fred and Teddy has kept crunching back in Visby, fiddling around with the various mechanics and animations for the enemies in the flying dungeon.

One of their latest creations is this little fellow, a robot that will feature as a mini-boss halfway (or so) through the dungeon!

The robot might not look like much in this form, but he’s a nasty one! He’s been programmed to transform himself into a swarm of magic orbs, beaming across the room while damaging everything in his way. Your only chance to kill him is in the scarce moments when he’s actually still in this physical form! But beware, he might have a surprise in store as you come close as well…

While the boys have been working on that, Vilya has been preparing the rooms in which the enemies will be found. Some of them can be seen here (click to enlarge the pictures):

This it the room that comes just before the boss room. You will begin your journey here and come back to it in the end, after you successfully managed to unlock the door by starting three different machines throughout the dungeon.

This room will house one of the puzzles of the dungeon, which is directly related to a skill you’ll learn here. The skill allows you to beam from one area in a room to another. How it will be done will be explained later – there will also be a visual cue where it is possible.

This week, we’ve finally started working at full speed on the first temple! We’ve got a ton of stuff down, most notably in the enemy department. Three new enemies have been prototyped, and we’re mostly done with the fourth and final normal temple enemy. After that, we’ll start designing the layout of the temple itself!

Here’s a screenshot with the three enemies we’ve made so far:

The enemies in the screenshot are the following:

Pecko (the bird)

The Pecko is a giant bird that has made the temple grounds its home, and is quite merciless when it comes to defending its territory! It’s a tanky, quite mobile enemy with a large attack range thanks to its ability to stretch its neck.

Wisp (the ball)

The Wisp is a small, fast harass unit that fires homing projectiles at players. Trying to fight tougher enemies with Wisp projectiles chasing makes any fight twice as tough, so you’ll want to hunt these things down quickly.

Guardian (the crystal)

The Guardian is a support enemy, which disrupts the battlefield in the enemy’s favor. They can switch between three modes:

Green crystals fire deadly beams between each other, cutting off areas and limiting player maneuverability, purple crystals create gravity fields which slow players down and blue crystals shield other enemy units (except other blue crystals), making them immune to damage until the shield wears off or the blue crystal is destroyed.

To be as effective as possible while crunching out these enemies, Fred made a pilgrimage to Visby and has been crashing at Teddy’s place for the past week! They filmed some of their exploits with Teddy’s crappy mobile camera. As a boon to you guys, we’ve used the clips to create a short “documentary” of the week: